Episode 183: Talking Funnels With Michael Killen

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Show Summary

Rob Cairns sits down with Michael Killen to talk about funnels.

Show Highlights:

1. What is a funnel?
2. How do funnels impact sales?
3. Pricing strategies for items in the funnel.
4. How to get people to opt-in to your funnel.

Show Notes

 

00:00

Everybody, Rob Cairns here today I’m here with Mike Killen, and we’re gonna talk about funnels. How are you today, Mike?

 

00:07

Thanks, Rob. Yeah, I’m really good. Thanks for having me on,

 

00:09

man. Now, it’s a pleasure. You know, we were saying before we went to record, I just admire your energy and your videos and stuff. Because it’s, it’s high. It reminds me a lot about me. I think we’re both ad DD. Right?

 

00:23

Do you know, that’s really interesting, because I’ve been trying to think about this a lot recently, I’ve taken a lot of time off. And I think the danger is, people think that I’m like this all the time. And I can tell you categorically that I’m not, I think it’s like, you have to put your best foot forward for some of this content. But in actual fact, I’m very quiet. You know, I don’t really don’t really talk to any people during the day, I kind of keep to myself. So yeah, I think it’s, I think it’s a carefully curated social media persona, and seems to work. So I’ll keep it up for the time being.

 

01:03

You know, it’s funny, you say that, and I’m pretty much like, I’m an extrovert personified. And so I get that, but but even I like my downtime, like I, you know, last night, I was just kind of sitting around that. And usually, I’m up late. And it was like, I’m done. Sorry, you know, I understand. So you wrote an amazing book about funnels that’s available on Amazon. I’ve read it. It’s in my Kindle library. I think it’s one of the best go to books. How did that book come about being?

 

01:38

That’s very kind of you? Yeah, so. So basically, so the company I run, sell your service, all we do is we just help marketing agencies, specifically, funnel builders, sell marketing funnels. And this all came about when I was running an agency myself, this would have been in 2012, going forward. And we did really well, I consumed all the content around funnels, this was before there was sort of specialised software for it. Yeah. And we would sell, you know, essentially, marketing funnels and opt in form installation and this kind of stuff. And we would sell it for, you know, 25 3050 grand a time higher sometimes. And when I sold the company and exited the company, and sold it to a media company back in 2016, I wasn’t really sure what I wanted to do. But the number one question I kept getting asked is, How could you possibly sell marketing services for $25,000. And I thought, what it’s, that’s pretty easy to be honest, I’ll show you. So I wrote it down on a whiteboard. And that turned into a Facebook group. And then that turned into a series of webinars and a course and so on, and so forth. And the book really came about when I realised I needed a specific, to be honest, it was very targeted. And I knew I needed a specific piece of content that was an inroad into the later products that we have. So the goal is that if you buy the book, five figure funnels, I will then try and sell you the, you know, $1,500 course on five finger funnels that have the same name, and you get access to the community. So it was a very, very strategic move for me to try and have something that was extremely high value, but also allowed me to start leading people into that next higher ticket product. So that’s, that’s really how it came about, and why we have it within our system, why bother to write a book?

 

03:42

Yeah. And that’s the whole concept of funnels is you start with a low cost item, get people’s trust, and then move up the ladder to higher cost items, correct?

 

03:51

Yeah, I mean, that’s certainly one of the ways of doing it. You know, I think I think marketing funnels have had a bit of a funny, I think they’ve been hijacked a little bit, because the concept of the funnel has been around for hundreds, arguably 1000s of years. I mean, Napoleon Hill, in his book, Thinking Grow Rich, that that whole book is essentially a sales letter. And the last in the original copies, the last sort of chapter is just trying to get you to buy his home study course. And so people have known that if you can get someone in, like you say, with a with a low barrier to entry product or piece of content, it’s much easier to sell them a product later on. But it’s also it’s not, it’s not the only way. All of all, a funnel is even without any tools or any kind of you know, technology around it. It’s just a way of taking someone who doesn’t know that you exist, and turning them into a happy, profitable repeat customer who refers you to their friends, somebody People do that exclusively via Instagram. Some people do it via a mixture of very sophisticated advertising and training and webinars and products. The the methodology is almost irrelevant. As long as you understand that you’re just trying to move people from, I don’t know you exist to, I’m not going to spend money with you. But I want to tell my friends that they should spend money with you as well.

 

05:21

Yeah, I think in our space in the technology and marketing space, too many people get hung up on what is the the mechanics or what is the software instead of running, realising it’s the system and how you do it that matters. And I always say to people, don’t sell me the solution, Sell me the results. And yes, what’s your thought on?

 

05:46

Yeah, so we have we ever saying just sell futures, not features, particularly when it comes to marketing funnels? And I said, well, the number one, the number one rule of selling anything is don’t talk about the things. So the number one rule of selling marketing funnels, in our cases, don’t talk about marketing funnels. And when you’re talking with when you’re trying to sell anything, all too often, exactly as you’ve stated, people try to bury deep down into what they are going to deliver to the customer, rather than what is the customer’s life going to look like at the end of this working relationship or, or during this working relationship with you. And you’re right, I see way too often, people getting really hit up and hang up on the the individual minutiae and the mechanics. And it’s, you know, we see it all the time I see it day in day out, I see, someone will say All webinars are dead. And then the next day someone say Facebook advertising is dead, you have to do this instead, for your funnels. And unlike you, if you buy into that you’re missing the point that any kind of marketing automation software, the only thing it can do is accelerate or replace something that you’re already doing. This is an this is a huge misconception I think people have where they’re like, Well, if I buy this piece of software, then magically, it will solve a problem for me. And in actual fact, if you can’t sell something face to face, you know, just like a call we’re having now if you can’t sell during that part, you can buy all the sale, the sales and marketing conversion tools in the world, it’s not going to increase the number of sales you’re getting, because you can’t have that one to one on one. So unless you’re doing that already, it’s useless buying any software. And I say this as someone who has marketing software, I don’t want you to buy it thinking it’s gonna magically change your life because it will only get you the results you’re currently getting it only accelerate the results that you’re currently getting. So that’s why I think it’s, it’s a very funny, it’s a funny environment that you and I work in.

 

07:54

Yeah, it’s funny because you know, in the marketing automation software, and let’s go there before we talk about funnels, a lot of high end marketers like to jump on Infusionsoft slash keep. And I Oh, and I should tell you, disclaimer, I’m Infusionsoft certified. I have been for a number of years. And I learned from a trainer and mentor a gentleman by the name of Paul Toby in Toronto interest in his son Adrian Toby is the one who developed groundhog, which is the WordPress marketing automation package and, and a shout out to both Paul and Adrian. But what Paul taught more than Infusionsoft was a system for building marketing automation. And you should be able to take that system and apply it to anything that does marketing automation. So one of the things and you know, when I when I think about it with funnels, and with marketing automation is most people, they say, Oh, I’ve got 1000 People in my funnel, I said, Great. Where are they? Oh, they’re in there somewhere. And that’s because they don’t set up a proper system a tagging and build a dashboard to have status somewhere people are, yeah, there’s an example. Right? So to me, the system’s more important. And that all said, believe it or not, I’m a happy ConvertKit users these days, because ConvertKit is really good for creative. So what do you like to use Mike?

 

09:32

I use high level right now. I’m really impressed with what they’ve been doing. I was using Active Campaign for a long, long time. And I was very deep into their ecosystem. And then, you know, high level spent a lot of time worrying me, I suppose. And I was very sceptical. I would I will proudly say I am not an early adopter. I I’d, you know, I don’t even buy, like video games, unless they’ve been out for a couple of years or software. I’m the same, by the way, because because I know that they’re riddled with bugs, and I just don’t have the time to kind of play around with this stuff. So. And so eventually they got me in, and I really like it. But the truth is, you know, just as you mentioned, Infusionsoft keep as it’s now now called. When people ask me, you know, what’s the best marketing funnel software? It’s a bit like, if you’re a photographer, what’s the best camera? The best camera is the one you have on you. It’s the one that you Yeah, there’s no like perfect software, there’s stuff that high level does that drives me insane. There was stuff that active campaign that does that drives me insane. I don’t think there’s such a thing as a perfect software. But exactly as you’ve stated, you can have and this is why people get frustrated buying the tools because they say, I’m kind of lost. I’m not sure what I need to be building first and exactly as you’ve stated, and like, well, first of all, where are your people who are closest to being customers? Or where are the people who you’ve just sent a proposal to? What was that list look like? Let’s create a campaign for them first. And I think because these pieces of software now they’re so powerful. I mean, it’s it’s mind boggling what they can do, you know, for what is it what some of them are, like $19 A month or 100 bucks a month, you know, it’s insane what some of these pieces of software can do. And it’s very overwhelming. And realistically, exactly as you’ve stated, we should be thinking in terms of, well, I’ve got five people who I know I’ve sent proposals or offers to or what for whatever product doesn’t matter. Let’s create a campaign of moving them to the next stage first. And let’s build that in the software first, rather than thinking, let’s do absolutely everything we can because that will that will destroy you. under its own weight, you will implode under the under the stress of trying to build it all at once.

 

12:00

Yeah, I would agree with it. And then the other. And then the other thought I would have is and say anybody who’s creating a list, and doing any type of funnel is gone. What segmentation is like to segment your list, learn to curate your lists. So what many people in my space? No, I have. I have an email list that’s around 8000. People, Mike, and hold your seat. My open rates are regularly between 60 and 65%. Wow. And that’s not unheard of. And the reason erupt at high is a you deliver good content, be you don’t abuse your list. And we all talk about that a lot that a lot of marketers abuse or list like I think any marketer who’s sending out multiple emails a day deserves to, in my opinion to be shot.

 

12:56

Like I think that’s really interesting. Okay, sorry, carry on.

 

12:59

And that’s okay. And be is to prune and clean up your list on a regular basis. So go ahead.

 

13:07

No, no. So the pruning side, I completely agree. Like we’re pretty brutal. We keep we keep the people who are on our we call it Do Not Disturb on subscribes. We certainly keep them on a list but purely because I want to make sure if they re subscribe, then we keep their data. But I will I completely agree that I will get rid of people as quickly as I can as quickly as I can. And the same with segmenting. You know, I think a lot of people believe that the size of the list is the size that you’re going to be sending the entire offer out to. And that’s wrong, you know, because you’d like exactly as you state you need people to put their hands up, you need people to say yes, I’m interested in this topic, and then continue down the path. I frequently get. Interesting, I never get complaints from my list. But I get complaints from people who I teach this to, I’m like, You should be emailing your list once a day, I believe you should be emailing your list once a day. And all too often, if people go that’s absolute nonsense. If someone emailed me once a day, I would immediately unsubscribe. I’m not at all interested in that. And I don’t think it’s got anything to do with frequency. In fact, we know it hasn’t got anything to do with frequency. Because the number of times people check Facebook, the number of people times they check their Gmail account. And the thought experiment, I like to try and run with people, as I say, if you received an email, and every time someone every time you clicked on that email you had $1 put into your account, you would be hitting refresh, hoping for a new email every hour. You know, and so evidently, it’s got nothing to do with the frequency. I think what upsets people is the enormous amount of have the weight of content based around, I want to try and sell to you compared to, let’s have a conversation. What are the questions that I want to ask? Like, what are you working on? That to me is far more important. And rightly so if you only sent one email a month, that was just a sales email, people would get annoyed with that. Amazon manages to get away with it via Amazon sends about five or six. So

 

15:28

Amazon is a different omen. I hate to tell you, and and at least what they do, right, is they send those emails based on what you’re looking

 

15:39

at. 100%. Exactly. That’s the segmentation side, isn’t it? Yeah,

 

15:42

I actually have an email rule that says take anything from Amazon and Tosca Google labelling and get it out of my inbox because it’s that bad. So, but I agree with it to some degree. I mean, a lot of people would argue with both you and with AI, and guys like Jason Resnick, and I’m sure you know, Jason, and say to us, hey, email marketing is dead. And I keep saying, Excuse me, I’m hearing and everything I’ve read says Millennials prefer email marketing, which they do not like, is text message marketing. Yeah, because text messaging is a little more invasive. I mean, it’s harder to do email, marketing or funnels right now. Because I’ll be honest, where I read, a lot of my email is standing in line at the grocery store standing in line at the liquor store standing in line at some store. Well, with the pandemic, we’re not standing in line. So are we right now?

 

16:42

No, but again, you know, I mean, first of all, for someone to say that email marketing is dead, I that always makes me laugh, because neato, is categorically it’s the only data source that you own. It’s like you there is nothing that will ever replace a newsletter list. Like, you know, that that’s the reason that so many print advertising and publishing agencies are still alive today, even though you know, by all by all standards, and admissions, they should have gone under years ago, it’s because they have the data or their customers, and that’s so valuable. But it’s not email marketing, any kind of marketing. I think what people are constantly looking for, especially when they say all this is dead, because we do a lot of Facebook Messenger marketing, we have conversations in Facebook Messenger, and it works really well. But I think a lot of people think, well, email marketing will take as you stay, there’s reasons that people open their emails, and when they open them, it could take three months to build up a decent enough relationship with someone to the point where they read them regularly. But there’s no faster method, I don’t think, you know, yes, you can pour money into advertising and start getting sales immediately. But I have seen repeatedly businesses who jump on the latest marketing trends, and they completely missed the mark, what they’re doing is that they are just working on the transaction, I wouldn’t even say it’s customer acquisition, because they they, those businesses die. As soon as they realise that they’ve got a tonne of customers who have bought a low ticket product, they haven’t got anything to sell them on the backend. They haven’t sent emails at all. If the biggest if a billion dollar marketing company, like Digital Marketer still sends emails, in my opinion, I’m gonna listen to them rather than some joker on YouTube who says, Oh, the new wave is now Facebook Messenger Instagram ads, it’s what I’d rather keep. If I had to get rid of my website or my email list, I’d get rid of my website first. Because I think that’s how powerful email email can be when it’s done properly.

 

18:49

I actually don’t want to get rid of either of them. Because at the end of the day, your website, your email list are the only two things you own everything else is what we call rented land or space that we don’t control or any you know, and you and I both know the rules on Facebook changed by the day these days. And

 

19:09

yeah, it’s been cheap as well. YouTube, you know, a lot of our a lot of my customers are YouTube influencers who have got a huge audience, but they have no idea how to maintain a stable revenue because they are basically at the behest of how YouTube decides that they’re going to dictate advertising on your platform and it’s it’s it can those businesses that go from 100k a month down to zero purely because that the YouTube algorithm or YouTube rules or whatever states we don’t want to promote your content anymore. It’s exactly say it’s it’s like it’s building a business in rented accommodation. It’s very, very dangerous and unstable.

 

19:53

It’s hard. Let’s jump into finance itself and show in terms of to get Buddy in the bottom of the funnel, yeah. What is the ideal amount a lot of people say it should be a no cost item. As a marketer, I have to tell you, I avoid using the word free as much as I can because we all know, the cost of that free item is your email address, right? We all let’s establish that right off the top. What’s a good cost for no cost? Item? $1? Item A free a $0 item? What do you think is to get somebody into the funnel into bar?

 

20:36

Yeah, I mean, this, this entirely depends on who your end target user is. Right? So Morgan Stanley was one of my customers. Their first initial consultation with me was a one hour call at their cost, and I charged them $497. And for them to go, who cares? Fifth for 500 bucks to talk to an hour for this guy to qualify is not a problem. And similarly, when we’ve worked with other customers, we have charged them a what is essentially exactly the same premise, it is a low ticket low barrier to entry product in order to have a conversation with us. If I’m then talking at the individual consumer or the small business person, then it I like to say, would they have that money in their Pay Pal account? So anything under 50 bucks, maybe? I actually again, I think the amount is irrelevant. I have tested everything from $1 up to $97. And the only thing that seems to make a difference is the specificity of the offer. This is what has made the massive difference, right? So if I say I’ve got a cheat sheet and a Google Doc that you can download, which will help you write a proposal in under 19 minutes. It’s 67 bucks that sells really really well. If I say here we go. I’ve got a copywriting masterclass. It’s $19 No one’s interested in the copywriting masterclass, because it’s not specific, the offer isn’t specific enough. So I think anything that people have got probably floating around in their paypal account easily. And anything that has got a specific offer those two combined, that is where people are like, again, for some of the larger customers, the intro product is in 45 minutes, I’ll tell you exactly which marketing automation software that you need to be using. That’s that was their inroad. We audited them and have a conversation with them. And that will save them months of deliberating and going backwards and forwards. And then from there. You know, as we’ve talked about, it’s an important case of building a relationship and having a conversation with them going forward.

 

22:46

Yeah, I think it’s all in a relationship when you go from the first step in the funnel, because the second step beyond the fact that you’re going to give them obviously more value at the second step. is the same in terms of the cost, or is it all in the value?

 

23:05

Journal? Again, it’s a good question. I wish I had a smarter and better answer, I haven’t. I again, we’ve tested a mixture of a tonne of different price points and products and that there isn’t a rhyme or reason. Some of the things we have seen is, let’s say let’s say I get you in with a free cheat sheet. So you don’t like the word free. But for all intents and purposes, it’s a one pager and I’m going to show you his his my marketing proposal example. Right. And you you pick that up. Coming back to your earlier point about segmentation, I now know that this person is interested in writing marketing funnel proposals. So what’s going to help them continually buy more and more products from me is if I continue down the path of a marketing proposal or a project proposal, if they opt in for the one page cheat sheet, and then I say, Hey, I’ve actually got a completely free template that you can download. You can use it wherever you want, you can import it, you can write proposals in 19 minutes plus this and training to show how to use it. It’s 67 bucks, click here to buy it. What I then want to do, as a very broad rule of thumb is I want to try and five to 10x the price that’s what I try and do. Okay, if someone comes through from the the opt in page or the squeeze page, I will redirect them immediately to a video sales letter. This is on some products and some products it’s different, but immediately redirect them to a video sales letter. And that video sales letter will sell them that initial lead in product that one time offer. If they buy that, I will then try to five to 10x the price so if I charge you know 50 bucks for the first thing, I will try and charge anywhere from 200 to 500 bucks for the next thing that is a very broad rule of thumb. Ours has a conversion rate Have around 15% For anyone who buys the first product to the second one. So that’s got quite a high rate, but the initial one time offer rate is probably around 1%. So if you can do that you can sort of work out the maths and work backwards. But some of the stuff, if people opt into a webinar, or against some free training, I’ll skip straight to trying to get them on a call, I’ll say, hey, why not what rather than waiting for the email to come through and having a having an taking some training and studying for 45 minutes? Why don’t we just jump straight away on a 10 minute call, and I’ll qualify them via a form or on the call, or they’ll go through to a member of my team. So again, there’s there’s a lot of mixing and matching, I think it’s important to find out what works for you and what you can accelerate because some stuff is harder to accelerate and scale than than other other processes.

 

25:52

Let’s talk mechanics for a sec, we were talking about squeeze pages or opt in pages as we talk. I’m a big fan. When I design opt in pages. I don’t like as little branding on that page as possible. And I and I certainly don’t like navigation menus on that page. Because I don’t want to give people the option to get distracted and go look at something else. And then I’m also a big fan that when people opt in, I think the most misused part of the whole package is the thank you page. I think people need to use the thank you page right away as an upsell opportunity or an opportunity to direct them to a piece of content that’s a one or something else besides saying thank you for opting in. What are your thoughts on things like that?

 

26:48

Yeah, I completely agree with you, you know, on the terms of the design, I have a really standard, you know, layout that I use. And again, if people want to check it out, I know it sounds like a plugin. But if people want to check it out, I think if you just go to like sell your service dot code at UK forward slash sales book or something like I think that’s the link or try and throw it in or whatever. And you’ll see that it is literally a headline, three bullet points and a button. And that’s it. Exactly the same as you I don’t want any links, because I don’t want any people kind of navigating around and getting lost. But what’s really funny is I have a lot of designers reach out to me about my site and say, Hey, we could design you a much better site, you know, your sales pages are a bit outdated or they’re a bit salesy and like, well, that’s yeah, they should be salesy, because I’m trying to sell something on them. But I say to them, I tell you what, I get roughly a 60 to 65% conversion rate on my pages. If you can beat that, I will gladly give you all the money you want to, to design the whole site. And to date, no designer has ever come back with a better design than the one I’ve got. I’m not saying mine is the best looking. But I would argue it is the best designed, because it does its job better than anything anyone else has ever put in front of me. So I think there’s a lot of false onerous put on design, and what aesthetics and what should look nice, and all this kind of stuff. And the reality is, if you overcomplicate it, that’s the number one thing that will drive down conversion. So I’m completely with you i, the simpler, the better. And even still now with paid advertising is exactly what I try to push people through to

 

28:37

what I would argue, you know, the take this point, one more step is, there’s a reason that newsletter sites, and that, you know, are very simple. What people want is how do I get the information I want? How do I navigate? How do I get it? How do I contact you, everything else is fluff. And by the way, as we’re recording this, what do I get in my email inbox? To more people trying to sell me website design without looking at my butt. So difficult. And and and the problem is, and people argue with me all along and say, you know, your site is simple. And you call yourself a design agency? And I say, Well, yeah, because what I care about is convergence. I don’t and, and don’t get me wrong, if you’re a model. If you’re a photographer, if you’re selling art paintings, then maybe you need to do a little bit more artsy stuff on your website. But really, websites are information only, and people need to get in that mode. And one of the biggest arguments, as you know, I’ve had for years with clients is the whole fight or argument and people still want those. Yes, they do. And it’s the biggest waste of space on the face of yours. So Yeah,

 

30:00

you know, that’s funny, because we used to call sliders that area where you keep the marketing department happy. Like you would design a site and then marketing and sale got this brand new promotion like, Yeah, put it on a slider that’d be really, really happy that it’s it’s sliding round. Yeah. And this in to your point about the thank you page as well 100% It what drives me bananas is when people and this goes back to your first point about what’s the system? And people say, Well, I don’t know where I don’t know where each member of my audience is with them what stage of the funnel they’re in. And we’ll dig around. And like you’re not even doing anything with the leads that are coming in, you’re not making an offer to them. They say, Well, you know, we don’t want to do a whole sales page and a video sales letter. I’m like, you don’t need that. You have three headlines that say thank you so much. Get your cheat sheets on its way, how about we jump on a call, and immediately you’ll start getting people on calls overnight. And you know that someone is interested in that topic. So it seems crazy to me. You could even argue if you wanted to get really into it. It’s immoral to leave them. Because someone has come to you and says, I have got this problem to do with my marketing proposals that I’m being sent out. I want to as someone who is trying to be helpful to my audience say, Well, how about Would you like some more help? Would you like? Further help? Would you like results better and faster and easier with more automation? Yeah, I’d love I’d love some more help. I’d love some more results. Great. Here’s the second thing that you need to get to buy and to get involved with. So it seems crazy to me that people aren’t capitalising on that initial excitement, because that’s when they’re actually most likely to buy is when they have, they have seen that you can help their help them and solve their problem. So to me, that’s when someone’s interest or likelihood of buying is at the absolute maximum, so why not capitalise on it?

 

31:54

And even if you don’t want to send them to a sales item, send them that three pieces of great content, send it to a podcast episode that tells your story. You know, it’s a sale. thank you pages are the biggest marketing opportunity that’s missed by companies doing email marketing or automation.

 

32:13

Yeah, I completely agree. I think I even did a seminar on that that’s floating around on how I’m like the thank you pages where you could basically double the revenue of your business if you were sensible. That’s where you would find the extra next to zero. Because it’s such a wasted opportunity. But alas, you know, we can only

 

32:32

we can only pray we can only preach this so many times. Yeah. So in your funnels, typically. And there’s a lot of discussion should be five stages should to be six stages should be there seven Jever preference?

 

32:48

Ah, no. So we, again, it actually comes down to our reporting. That’s actually how we’ve set it up. So we have we use slabs. So we say, if someone’s a subscriber and lead the appointments, who generated the proposals we’ve sent, the sales we’ve made and sales plus, which is basically follow up. So what’s that SLA P S. So we have six stages, I would say in our funnels in general. And that gives us a pretty broad and a pretty good overview of how many people are moving through the systems and and obviously, the numbers of in of those people fluctuate depending on the campaigns we’re running. But in an ideal world, you know, you would have, it’s actually the bottom half of the funnel is more important as well, if someone wasn’t ever managing subscribers, or they weren’t even bothered about the number of leads they’ve got or the number of like appointments and proposals they’re sending, if they just had two stages, which is, here’s the number of sales we generate. And here’s the number of follow up campaigns we send to people who have bought in a funny way, maybe that would be like the perfect system, at least to start with. Or at least that’s where I would start looking at all. And again, everyone wants to go straight to the lead generation everyone want to go to wants to go straight to I want I need more leads, I need more leads. And we have a look at well, you sent 10 proposals last month or your you had 100 people visit this checkout page and only 10 People bought or any one person bought. What are you doing with those other 90%? What’s happening with them? Because I don’t know. But we even see it worse than that. I’m like, Well, how many? How many proposals do people ask for? Say are five? Well, how many have you written and sent? Like I haven’t I haven’t got around to it yet. Right? So you don’t need more leads do what you need to do is start closing the sales that you have been been been offered already and start developing relationships with those customers. That’s where the money is. Lead Generation is extremely expensive. And we say that unless your business is doing over 350,000 US dollars roughly a year. I don’t think you should be spending money on lead generation I think you should be spending every single cent and every single minute of your time having conversations with your current customers, which I know sounds paradoxical, because how do you get those customers in the first place, but if you focus on the, the results, and the customers and you try to get people on calls and have conversations with them and work through a referral network, that is the route rather than scaling it at the top, because until you’ve got dedicated appointment setters and dedicated closes, more leads is just going to add to your your workload, it’s not going to make your life any easier. But that’s a whole. Once you start pulling on that thread, you start going down some very, very long parts. I don’t know that we’ve got time to cover on this call. But that would that would be that would be where I would start focusing in terms of how many stages you should be looking at with your funnel. But it’s an interesting question.

 

35:51

No, I would agree with it. I mean, I I kind of, you know, I think about what you just said, Mike, and I look at my own business. And, you know, I look at parts of it. And I’m over that $350,000 range, and I would still weigh over. And I would still bet you that. Despite the fact that run funnel said 70% of my client, new clients are referral based. And or building that relationship. I mean, because people don’t understand that in today’s market. It takes somewhere between 10 and 15 touches or senior stuff for somebody to even look at you. There’s a reason why Coca Cola runs an ad every hour. And people laugh at that. And they say, That’s too much. And I say well, do you understand why? Yeah. And so there’s a reason. And what we got to realise is, I think a lot of small business owners actually drop on the follow up, and they drop on the on the that side of it. So I’ll give you an example. I have a friend of mine, who’s retired. And he’s looking for a plumber. And the plumbing company called Three days ago said, oh, a plumber will call you back and talk to you about your situation. And he’s still waiting three days later. And the contractors are like some of the worst of the worst. Yeah. Because they chase they get busy. So they chase job after job after job. And small business owners are the same, and they never invest any time in the future. And the problem with that is the best time to make money or to or to chase future money is when you’re making money, not when you’re not when you’re struggling.

 

37:46

Yeah, absolutely. Why why do you think people hesitate might be the only word I can think of hesitate with the follow up and the closing. Essentially, why do you think that is? They’re afraid

 

37:58

of rejection? Yeah. Yeah. And I really believe that, and I mean, but if you don’t try, you’re rejecting it yourself. Yeah. It’s a I think it’s a self esteem problem with a lot of business owners. Yeah.

 

38:13

Yeah. I agree. I think there’s, I think there’s, I was talking to a colleague of mine about this. And he was saying, his hesitation in following up essentially comes from he doesn’t want to lose the sale. So he doesn’t want to pressure them too much. And I’m like, I used to work in car rental sales. And oh, gosh, I know full well, what I used to do door to door sales for like satellite TV. So I know full well what high pressure sales is occasionally sending someone an email to say, Hey, I just wanted to check in. Are you still suffering from this problem? You know, we’re really keen to start that is not high pressure sales, we could do high pressure sales another way and I know that you’ve had those experiences as well and maybe even done it. So it’s, it’s this weird thing of like, he’s like, Well, I’m worried that I’m going to lose the sale. And I’m like, no one in the history of mankind has ever lost the sale because they were keen to try and follow up and closer people. And you mentioned earlier that someone has, I get them all the time, I constantly get them especially on LinkedIn, like, hey, we’d love to redesign your website or do your marketing for you or whatever. And if I was any of those people, and I had done my research, and they had repeatedly sent me emails, tried to understand more about the business and had become smarter, and they weren’t sending 100 emails a day they were sending one to one person to try and build that relationship. I know those conversion rates would go up. But again, people are too quick trying to look for that immediate 2% that will convert right now and they are ignoring. As a rule we say that 2% of your audience will buy there and then the other 2% will probably buy within the next 30 to 90 days, but 90 6% will buy but exactly as you’ve stated, they need to see the message eight 910 1112 1314 15 times before they even know what you do. Like. You need to repeat that so many times and through so many channels and become consistent in knowing in stating that message for someone to say, oh, yeah, Rob’s going to be the person to work with me there and continuing that follow up processes is vital to all businesses. And that is where I believe that the money is to be found not in an easy and fast lead generation. I’m happy to be proven wrong. But as if

 

40:39

no, I think I think you’re absolutely right. And it’s funny, you mentioned LinkedIn. And I would say, you know, if somebody took the time, and it actually happened yesterday, their red bar profile? Yeah, they comment about something on their profile and said we could we have a conversation, and I’m all for that. But don’t read my profile, or follow me, and then send me what we all know his LinkedIn span and say, by the way, here’s my services reach out to me, I’m bah, bah, bah, bah, bah, bah. I mean, I mean, I mean, you do it really smart. What you do is even on Facebook, you’ll say, I’ve posted a new video on you and I have had conversations over your videos. And I’ll say, I really like this. This is why and I get this. And this is why and and what people don’t get is. And you don’t even ask for an opt in. You’ll just say who wants it. And I have another good friend. Shout out to my friend Adam Franklin in Australia. He does the same thing. He’ll post something. And for low hanging fruit, he doesn’t ask for an email address. He just says, Who wants it? And he’ll DM me a little link.

 

41:49

Yeah, exactly. And again, it’s all based around the idea of segmentation and getting people to put their hand up. And I know full well that there’s people who I have my eye on, right, because our team notice that they’re constantly engaging with our content. They’re asking for, you know, the free stuff, and they want to get involved. And I wish there was a smarter and more sophisticated method, but 50% of the time, we’re just saying, you know, Hey, Rob, I really think we should get on a call. I know that you’ve been interested in this, whatever I’ve been talking about. We’ve got a 10 minute brainstorming session. Are you interested? And it works. And it’s, it’s I have these targeted customers, people who I want to work with who I think they would be perfect for the programme. Whatever it is we’re putting out and I don’t know why, again, people overcomplicate this. I don’t think it’s complicated.

 

42:45

I don’t either.

 

42:47

Yeah, I don’t know.

 

42:48

Mike, thanks for the amazing conversation. If somebody wants to get a hold of you work with you get together with your team. How’s the best way?

 

42:57

Yeah, the easiest thing is actually emailing me I can’t guarantee that it’ll be me who replies but my email address is Michael@sellyourservice.co.uk at UK I do read and reply to every single one of them. But sometimes I get my team to do that. I’ve also got sell your https://sellyourservice.co.uk/ the website and my YouTube channel is probably the place where I hang out the most which is youtube.com forward slash sell your service so people can find me. Find me there.

 

43:23

Thanks, Mike. Have an amazing day. You too. Thanks for having me on.

 

43:26

Good. Speak to Rob. A pleasure.

 

43:27

Bye bye

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